VIERA AND HROTHGAR COMPLAINT MEGATHREAD

[AnotherPerson]

How does that translate?

We've seen they're adding more hairstyles to Viera, and that they function normally.

Why should the state of Hrothgar now give us concern over something separate that has shown itself to not have the same problem?

If I had to be honest.. it's a concern of quality.
The overall quality has been lowering these days. It's very subtle but if you do look at it from a larger perspective, the degradation is actually visible for certain aspects of the game.

First it was healer gameplay - obvious fixes and changes taking multiple patch cycles while DPS and tanks get obvious fixes much more quickly. Now it's the job changes made to Samurai that made very little sense.

Then it's the hairstyles and character customization for Viera and Hrothgar. Then excuses for not having access to hats because it took too long to redesign older ones to fit with these models, but in exchange, they were promised updates for unique hairstyles. Then comes other races getting new hairstyles and new headpieces for the next 3 years. New events with headpieces. While Hrothgar and Viera's hairstyles were "promised on being worked on, but delayed". [New Endwalker gear] with headpieces but a portion of them is still not made available to Hrothgar and Viera.

"Don't worry, we haven't forgotten you, we're still working on them!"

Now, after 3 years, the hairstyles don't even feature ears... What was the reasoning for not giving Hrothgar and Viera hats again?

It is the worst kind of malicious compliance. Why shouldn't the players be disappointed? Being told something like "we care!" when the results look as if they haven't actually tried at all?

And if they did try, that's an even bigger concern to quality. It took them a full 3 years to get this out?

Not to mention, Hrothgars still have to pay a fantasia to change their hairstyle - which is a strict limitation on this race in particular from being unable to access the Aesthetician to change to any hairstyle properly. There was no adjustment for this problem that affects this race that no other race have. The only rationale for this is that they don't care enough due to the playerbase being too small, so they believe they can get away with minimal complaints as it's not a priority.

Now, there is obviously a huge disconnect between the players and the developers, and it shows that the a portion of the their team do not have the best interests in the playerbase. It feels as if they're testing the limits to see what they can get away with. Honestly, I would've never been a person who would even consider this notion to be plausible with the amount of effort they usually put into making this game, but when the screw-ups are this bad, I have to really re-evaluate whether they are actually just giving excuses and feeding us lies.

As Alisaie said, "Making promises you have no way of keeping is not a kindness - it's a lie, plain and simple!"

And we Hrothgars have been lied to for 3 years.
Plain and simple.

If they can get away with doing this because Hrothgar is a minority race where less people will feel the impact, then who knows what other kinds of corners they are willing to cut for content that not much players do, and will continue to cut in the future?

Hopefully I'm overthinking it, but I would have to be completely blind if I didn't notice what they did with Hrothgar's hairstyles and that was a blatant 'crossing the line'. That, or I had too much faith in the developers in the first place.

[SturmChurro]

...

Very well said. I have been saying this for years, some of us saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. I used to have little hope, but Endwalker kind of crushed that for me.

I hate that this is all you guys got after 3 years. I only saw brief snippets of the live letter, and these hairs, but the fact that you all still have to use a fantasia to change... for this? Wow.

To add, I have been seriously considering taking a break from this game -entirely- for at least 2 years. Until the next expac. Especially after my warning and everything else.. I just don't like the direction the game is going. I don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. If this is the quality we can expect at the start of their 10 year plan or whatever, then yeah...

[Iscah]

Now, after 3 years, the hairstyles don't even feature ears... What was the reasoning for not giving Hrothgar and Viera hats again?

Because they have "unique heads", whatever that really means. Not just because they have ears, or Miqo'te wouldn't have hats either.

I'm not defending the look of the finished product on those new hairstyles, but I do suspect it's a consequence of doing something they didn't want to do from the start because they couldn't do it without some kind of weird compromise like this.

I know "modders can do it" and all that, but if it's really that simple to do then why aren't the devs doing a tiny amount of extra work to avoid a huge amount of justified-by-the-end-product flak? Why can't they just copy-paste it over in five minutes if it's really that simple to fix?

They make too many other things for the answer to be "they're lazy", because why choose to be consistently lazy in one specific corner of the game?

They took a gamble and built a race that was never going to work with the standard character creator, and apparently chose to stick to their vision for the race over compromising it into something that would play better with the creator, but would probably end up at the "furrier Miqo'te" concept instead of a true beastman.

That said, I continue to suspect that they massively underestimated how much some people want to change hairstyles regularly.

[Iscah]

I hate that this is all you guys got after 3 years. I only saw brief snippets of the live letter, and these hairs, but the fact that you all still have to use a fantasia to change... for this? Wow.

Why assume this?

Given the selection matching everyone else's, I am tentatively assuming that they have redesigned Hrothgar to use the normal hairstyle selection instead of being custom-built onto the face.

I think that exactly why they have the generic assortment and not styles picked out for them specifically.

[Yencat]

Why assume this?

Given the selection matching everyone else's, I am tentatively assuming that they have redesigned Hrothgar to use the normal hairstyle selection instead of being custom-built onto the face.

I think that exactly why they have the generic assortment and not styles picked out for them specifically.

Considering it's the only race that has ever had to do that, you'd expect they would make a bigger deal of showing or talking about how that's not the case anymore. I assume many Hrothgar players would rather go in assuming the worst and be pleasantly surprised.

Hell, as Viera I'm expecting that single hairstyle they showed (and the male counterpart) and nothing else until I see it for myself.